Watch List Weekly Recap 7/1/22
A varied bag this week: Calls to civic action, Elvis on the big screen, summer movie memories, recent hits on VOD, and a lovely little movie about a mollusk.
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Last Saturday, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, I gave vent to a lot of shared feelings and, more importantly, asked myself and readers to start thinking in terms of concrete action, in the near and farther future. The Court’s decisions later in the week did nothing to allay fears, and the upcoming term looks even worse. We’re at DEFCON 1, folks.
From the horrific to the ridiculous: Some thoughts on Baz Luhrmann’s over-the-top “Elvis” and why, in the words of William Carlos Williams, “the pure products of America go crazy.”
For Throwback Thursday, I asked readers to cast themselves back to the summer movies and memories of their youth: The drive-ins, the teen comedies, “Jaws” making you never want to swim anywhere ever again. Featuring: The Great Coolidge Monster Riot.
Two new movies reviewed: The winsome, wistful “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On,” which pairs Jenny Slate and Isabella Rossellini as sentient mollusks, and “Mr. Malcolm’s List,” which reduces Jane Austen to a bag of chocolate popcorn you c an’t stop eating. Plus: Good recent movies now available for streaming.
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Watch List Weekly Recap 7/1/22
I burst out laughing at your account of The Great Coolidge Monster Riot. But there are predecessors. I’m recalling “The Hammy” (formally the Hamilton Theater) on Bowdoin St in Dorchester circa 1943. At one level, we went there only to torment “Charlie” the much beleaguered manager. It too was a dump. Every Saturday, we eagerly awaited the next episode of whatever cheesy western serial was on offer. But if ir was an inadvertent rerun of last week’s or the film broke in the middle, all hell broke loose, just as you described. Ten year old boys can become unmanageable pretty quickly— poor Charlie. On rare occasions we had enough funding to afford the Strand in Upham’s Corner, much, much, more sedate and we behaved ourselves. And- my older sister ran the candy counter!! A good deal. The Strand is still in business under City auspices.